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Turbo or Torture?

With about 25 cm of snow on the ground here in Bourg D’Oisans, my outdoor cycling options are pretty much nil (that is until I get a pair of studded tyres for my mountain bike!). In the meantime, the basement beckons…..

I’ve set up a nice area for turbo trainer sessions – it’s also pretty cool down there so I don’t need the fan on full blast most of the time (except for the tough sessions – like today’s!). I downloaded a Sufferfest video last year, and today was the first time I’ve used it properly (I had a quick go with Delphine earlier this year but we only got half way through). Well it certainly wasn’t false advertising – I sure did suffer! I rather perversely went for the longest video I could buy at the time; my reasoning being that I could tough it out for short interval sessions on my own, but might need help with motivation for the longer efforts. Well it did the trick – I had that trembly/wobbly legs feeling when I got off the bike, which is specific to a real hard effort. I’d not had that since doing intervals up Alpe D’Huez in July!

You can see from my heartrate graph that the first part was a set of 3 pyramids (each interval getting harder then back down again) and the second part 5 shorter efforts at above TT pace, ending with a sprint. I wasn’t expecting the last three sprints though – they conveniently didn’t mention that in the video and as a result I ended up pushing myself pretty hard!

I’m sure that some of you are thinking – why are you doing intervals at this time of year? Well I’m not from the old school ‘small chainring only over winter’, although I do know I also need to get in the steady aerobic base stuff. I also quite like the idea of giving my body a shock now and then….I don’t want it to forget how to do hard efforts by the time spring rolls round here in March, and I can get out on my bike for real again…..